“Lauren?”
She didn’t open her eyes at his voice. Nor did she turn.
“Lauren, I think you need to tell me who Josh is.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. If he’s your husband, I need to know. If he’s your boyfriend…I need to know how serious you are.”
Lauren laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Shaking her head, she opened her eyes and did up her bra, forgoing the usual readjustment of breasts in favour of shoving her arms into her shirtsleeves and covering up her bare torso as quickly as possible. “How serious I am?” she shot over her shoulder. “About Josh? Very serious. About you leaving ASAP? Even more so.”
“Lauren, I didn’t mean—”
She saw red. The second those words left Nick’s lips she saw red. Saw it. Felt it. She spun to face him, fists clenched, jaw bunched. “Yes, you did, Nick.” She glared at him, a dull throb in her temple. “As always, it didn’t matter what anyone else wanted, you got what you wanted. Well, bravo for you, Mr. Blackthorne. You just proved that you still have an effect on my body. Aren’t you clever? But you also proved you haven’t changed a bit since you left me fifteen years ago. The arrogant, self-centred rock star is still in existence, though why I thought it would be any different is beyond me. So here’s a newsflash for you, Nicky. I don’t want you touching me again. I don’t want you touching me, I don’t want you near me and I don’t want you talking to me. Please go away and be famous and fawned over elsewhere.”
The tirade finished as abruptly as it started, but it left her spent. She closed her eyes against the sight of Nick, standing but a few feet away from her, his face as indelible on her existence as a brand on her soul. For all her postulating and carrying on about how she was over him, all it had taken was one kiss—one kiss—and she was his again. To do with what he wanted.
She hated him. For what he’d done to her fifteen years ago. For what he’d done to her just now.
“Believe it or not, I didn’t come here to make you angry.”
His voice played over her senses, low and deep and husky. It had never ceased to turn her on, Nick’s voice. When he sang to her, which he had done often in the early years of their relationship, his voice had been all the foreplay she’d needed. Now, try as much as she did to stop it, her body reacted. Her heart quickened, her nipples pinched tight. His was a voice of sin and pleasure. The voice with the power of the Pied Piper’s proverbial flute—except instead of entrancing children, Nick Blackthorne’s voice seduced women.
“Why did you come here, Nick?” she asked. “Was it to prove something?”
“No.”
The single-word answer was so haunted she opened her eyes and looked at him. Her pulse slammed into her throat. That same tormented expression etched his face, but whereas on another man it would make his visage appear wretched, on Nick it just made him look all the more achingly gorgeous—the tortured musical genius, a man ruled by the songs in his soul. Except he wasn’t. Lauren knew that. He was ruled by his prick and his ego.
Is he still though? Have you ever seen him look so…lost?
She ground her teeth, folding her arms across her chest and fixing him with a steady stare. “Why did you come here?”
He met her gaze with his own unwavering stare. “I came to say sorry.”
Lauren wanted to laugh. She wanted to scoff in his face. She couldn’t. Her heart was hurting too much to do that. She licked her lips, her mouth dry. “I don’t believe you.”
Nick didn’t flinch. “It’s true. I came to say sorry and to ask you to a wedding.”
Lauren blinked. Okay, she hadn’t seen that one coming. “A wedding?”
Nick laughed, a self-deprecating snort she’d never heard from him before. It did unsettling things to her stomach.
“It’s stupid, I know, but I received an invitation from this amazing couple I met a few months ago, a couple who pretty much saved my life, and the only person in the entire would I can think of who I want to share their special day with is you.”
A lump filled Lauren’s throat. Thick and fast and choking. She swallowed, but it didn’t go away. Nor did Nick suddenly grow two heads. Surely that’s what was meant to happen now, wasn’t it? Surely this had to be some surreal dream she was in? Nick appearing out of the blue, rendering her defenseless against him with a single kiss and then asking her to a wedding? “A wedding?” she repeated.
He shrugged, a lop-sided smile pulling at his lips. “I’ll admit this hasn’t gone exactly as I planned, but then you always did throw my plans into wild loops, Lauren Robbins.”
She held up a finger, giving him a narrowed-eyed scowl. “Don’t.”
He paused for a second. “Who is Josh, Lauren? I need to know, because I have to tell you something here and now and your answer will greatly impact on just how I go about doing that.”
“What do you have to tell me?”
He shook his head. “Who’s Josh? Is he your boyfriend?”
Lauren lifted her chin. “If he was? Would you go away then? Leave Murriundah?”
His smile grew more crooked. “No.”
“So what difference does it make if he is my boyfriend?”
Nick took a step toward hers. “The difference is whether I have to compete with someone or not?”
Lauren’s heart slammed harder into her already tight throat. “Compete?”
“For you, Lauren.” His grey eyes seemed to glint, as if the hottest of fires suddenly burned in their depths. “I came back to say sorry for fucking up, sorry for walking away from you, from us, sorry for tearing out your heart. I came back to apologise and invite you to a wedding. To share a moment of pure happiness with the only person I have ever been truly happy with, and then you kissed me.”
She stared at him. “And?” The word was barely a whispered breath.
“And then you asked for more, and I knew I had more to give you. So much more. I have more to give you, Lauren. I have fifteen years of more to give you, if you’ll let me, and then a whole lot more.”
“No.” She shook her head. The ridiculousness of the situation struck her. Here she was standing in her best friend’s bedroom wearing only a shirt and underpants as the world’s biggest rock star told her quite clearly he wanted her. Again. The world’s biggest rock star who could have anyone he wanted, who had women and men throw themselves at him on a daily basis, wanted her.
Say yes.
She shook her head again. “No.”
“No you won’t let me, or no, you won’t tell me who Josh is.”
“Both.”
He took another step toward her. “Lauren, please.”
She stared at him, eyebrows knotting. “Nick, do you have any idea what you did to me fifteen years ago?”
“I think I do. And I want to show you how fucking sorry I am.”
“I can’t let you do that.” She caught her bottom lip with her teeth, hugging herself. “I barely survived the last time you left. Now, it’s not just…” She bit on her lip again. “I’m just a school teacher in a small town that doesn’t have a single set of traffic lights, and I like that. You’re Nick Blackthorne. You date royalty and fly in private jets and have women send you their worn underwear. You’re talking about competing, Nick? I can’t compete with that. I can’t and I won’t. It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to Josh.”
Nick’s eyes flared that same black heat. “He’s a lucky guy, this Josh.”
Lauren swallowed. “I like to think so.”
“But tell me, Lauren,” he murmured. “Does he make you feel like this?” He destroyed the distance between them in one step to capture her mouth with his.
The kiss was deep and thorough and utterly possessive. It claimed her lips and rendered her knees weak. His hands cupped her face, his fingertips coming to rest on her temples, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones. His tongue delved into her mouth, seeking hers. Finding it, mating with it. She wanted to stop him, she knew she should—it was insane to let
him kiss her like this—but the second the notion of pulling away entered her mind it was washed away by the waves of desire and need Nick’s kiss sent surging through her.
She moaned, surrendering herself to that desire. For a moment, just a moment. Surely she could allow herself one more moment?
Nick moaned back, a raw sound so full of want her head swum. His heat seeped into her, his body hard and lean against her. So hard. All of him.
She shifted, rolling her hips. His erection pressed to her belly, and not for the first time in her life of being kissed by him, she wished she was taller. She wished she was his height so her sex could align with his. She needed to feel its long, thick length on her mons. Just for one moment…
“Fuck, I love kissing you.” Nick’s groan, uttered against her lips, sent ripples of tight heat into her core. “It’s like kissing a horny angel.”
His tongue swiped over hers before she could respond. Or maybe she did? Maybe the whimper in her throat and the thrust of her hips harder to his body was her response? She wasn’t sure anymore. Wasn’t even sure what she’d been doing before this kiss. Her mind didn’t seem to be hers anymore. It was lost to the pleasure welling inside her. All due to Nick’s lips, Nick’s tongue, Nick’s kiss. Her blood roared in her ears and her pussy throbbed. She slid her hands up his torso, the sculpted muscles beneath her palms tensing at her touch. She liked that. Liked the effect she had on him. She skimmed her fingertips over his nipples, her sex squeezing as they puckered into tighter points under the material of his shirt.
His shirt. Lord, why hadn’t she removed his shirt along with his jacket? Just to be sure he hadn’t been bruised when he hit the ground back at school? If she’d removed his shirt her skin could be touching his skin now. In fact, she should remove her own shirt. Share her body heat with him. Let her warmth heal him. Let her body soothe the pain she’d caused him. It was only right.
She tried to pull away, tried to disengage herself from the kiss. The need to strip naked was too powerful to ignore, but Nick wouldn’t let her. His hands raked down her back, his arms cinching around her, as if he feared she was going somewhere. Ha! She wasn’t going anywhere. Why would she, when Nick was kissing her with such ruthless abandon and greed? When his erection ground against her belly, an undeniable testament to his desire for her? She moaned again, her innermost muscles clenching, wanting that which her body and her heart remembered all too easily—Nick inside her, possessing her. Filling her. Fucking her.
Making love to her.
Like he used to.
Used to.
The thought slipped through the rising pleasure consuming her mind. Used to. Past tense. There was a reason for that. He’d left her. For something else. For the groupies, the starlets.
She tore her lips from his, turning her head away. She had to stop this, fight it.
Nick’s fingers found her chin, returning her face to his, at once determined and refusing argument. His mouth captured hers again, his tongue and lips growing fierce. Arrogant.
Fresh pleasure crashed through Lauren. How was she to resist this? No one had ever kissed her like Nick, with such single-minded purpose and hunger. With a hunger that made her feel worshipped and sensual and wanton and desired beyond reason.
No one else had ever made her ache for more like Nick. No one had ever made her very soul sing.
Oh Lord, she was still in love with him. Still in love with the man who’d broken her heart and killed the song in her soul.
A chill razed through the heady pleasure trying to consume her. She stiffened, her stupid, foolish heart leaping into her throat, her intoxicated brain finally catching up with her sanity. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t do this again. It was no good for her. No good for Josh. No good for anyone.
She flattened her palms on Nick’s chest and shoved. Hard. Hard enough to force him back a stumbling step. He stared at her, chest heaving, eyes smoldering. He looked gorgeous and sexual and dangerous. Oh fuck, if he reached for her again…
“No,” she croaked, shaking her head. “I can’t.”
“I bet Josh doesn’t kiss you like that, Lauren,” he said, his voice as strained as her own. He pulled a ragged breath, his eyes half-lidded, his pupils dilated. “Tell me he does and I’ll walk away right now, but I’ll know if you’re lying. I always did. I don’t want to compete for you, babe, but I will. I will show you what this Josh can’t give you, I will reawaken the pleasure I gave you all those years ago until you can’t think of anyone else but me. Until you forget all about Josh and let me make you mine again.”
Hot, tight tension speared into Lauren’s core at Nick’s statement. Her sex contracted, grew wet. Her breath caught at the naked desire in his eyes.
Her chest squeezed at the arrogant conceit of his words. Nick the rock star. The man used to getting exactly what he wanted. Damn him.
She clenched her jaw, tilting her chin to fix him with an unwavering glare. “I will never forget about Josh, Nick Blackthorne. I’ll forget about you the minute you walk away from me—again—like I did fifteen years ago, but I will never forget about Josh. Ever. And you’ll never, ever compete with him.”
Nick’s eyes flared grey fire. “I beg to differ. And by the smell of your pleasure on the air, so does your body.”
Lauren balled her hands into fists. “You will never compete with him.”
“And why not?”
“Because he’s my son. Now leave me the fuck alone.”
A calm stillness fell over Nick. His nostrils flared again. His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat. “You do have children.”
His voice registered his shock. Lauren nodded, wishing she was anywhere else but here. “One. A son. I’m thirty-four, Nick. My life continued after you left. What? Did you think I’d still be pining away for you after all these years?”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even blink. She let out a disgusted snort. If only he knew the truth of that last question. The pain of it. “That changes everything, doesn’t it, Nick? Making me ‘yours’ again isn’t so simple when there’s a kid on the scene. Kinda brings along a whole lot of extra baggage, doesn’t it?”
Still, he didn’t say anything. But his eyes never left her face.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. Dinner time and all.”
“Where’s his dad?”
Lauren forced a dismissive laugh from her throat. “Is that any real concern of yours?”
“It is. He’s been inside you. I hate him.”
A deep, hot pain slowly sank into Lauren’s soul. “I hate him too, Nick,” she said, unable to keep the torment from her voice. “And I’m one-hundred percent certain you’ve been inside more than one woman since me, so you don’t really have any grounds for being so incensed, do you?”
“Who is the father?”
Lauren’s chest squeezed. She drove her nails into her palms, her mouth dry. “Someone I knew once.”
“Where is he? Here? In Murriundah?”
“I don’t have to tell you that.”
“So he is then?”
Lauren swallowed. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She let out a ragged sigh. She wasn’t up to this. Not now. It was too much. “Can you just go please, Nick? I need to go home and give my son his dinner, make sure he’s done his homework and mark some schoolwork. That’s my life now. You need to go jet off somewhere, sing on a stage, sign some autographs, sleep with a supermodel. That’s your life. You may be able to make me melt with your kisses—and you do, Nick, I can’t deny that—but my heart doesn’t belong to you anymore. You can’t touch it. The guy who once could do that with his songs and his kisses left me a long time ago. Now it belongs to a different boy, one who is waiting at home for fish and chips, who rarely gives me a kiss and will most likely pick a DVD about robot trucks to watch on the telly tonight. And you know what? I don’t want it any other way.”
Nick stood motionless. His gaze held h
er just as still. She wanted him to say something. She wanted him to say, “Okay, Lauren. I’m going.” She wanted him to say sorry.
“How old is he? Your son?”
Lauren swallowed, her pulse thumping so hard in her throat it was painful. It was the question she hadn’t wanted Nick to ask. “He’s a teenager,” she answered, fighting to keep her voice level. “A hungry teenager. Teenagers are always hungry. Must be the hormones. Now, as I said, I have to go home and feed him. Can’t stay around and chat anymore. Sorry.”
Nick’s Adam’s apple jerked in his throat.
She drove her nails harder into her palms. “It was nice to see you again, but if you’re not leaving, I will. Just lock the door on your way out, okay? Murriundah isn’t quite the same town it was when we were growing up.”
“How old is your son, Lauren?”
The question was level. Steady. Nick didn’t move. Just stood before her, smolderingly sexy, achingly gorgeous and ridiculously famous. Oh God, she didn’t want to answer him. She didn’t.
But you have to. You know that, right? He won’t leave until you do.
“He’s a teenager,” Nick said, his gaze pinning her to the spot, his expression unreadable, “so what? Thirteen? Fourteen? Can’t be older than that.”
Lauren swallowed. Her breath caught in her throat. She stared at him, wanting to flee from the room, wanting to run as far away as she could. Unable to take a step. Unable to stop Nick’s train of thought.
Oh no. No.
“Can’t be fifteen,” he went on, “’cause that would make him…” His voice faded away. His eyes widened.
Her stomach rolled.
“How old is Josh, Lauren? You hate his father. His father’s not on the scene. The only piece to the puzzle I don’t have is Josh’s age.”
“There’s no puzzle,” she said, but even to her ears the words sounded hollow. “He’s a teenager, Nick. Stop looking for something that isn’t there.”
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